Venture Capitalist Tim Draper Has Submitted An Official Proposal To Split California Into Six States

Venture capitalist Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson has developed a proposal to split up California into six separate states, according to TechCrunch, and has also launched an online volunteer hub called SixCalifornias to garner public support.

To the extent the Silicon Valley ‘meritocracy’ has inherited royalty, Draper is a crown prince: his father is William Henry Draper III, founder of Sutter Hill Ventures (as well as a member of the same Skull and Bones society tapping class as former president George Bush, Sr.), and Tim’s grandfather William Henry Draper founded Draper, Gaither & Anderson, which has been described as the West Coast’s first VC firm.

1. It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average.
2. Competition is good, monopolies are bad. This initiative encourages more competition and less monopolistic power. Like all competitive systems, costs will be lower and service will be better.
3. Each new state can start fresh. From a new crowd sourced state flower to a more relevant constitution.
4. Decisions can be more relevant to the population. The regulations in one new state are not appropriate for another.
5. Individuals can move between states more freely.

It’s surprising that none of these reasons, or much of the rough proposal embedded below, involve numbers analysis. Frankly, if an entrepreneur were pitching this proposal as a business and their most compelling finding was that “Every new state can start fresh,” they’d be thrown out of most VC offices.

Draper proposes the six new states to be named: Jefferson, North California, Central California, Silicon Valley, West California and South California. Funny how Draper believes Silicon Valley is the only region which should have its own characteristic moniker, aside from the oddly platonic ‘Jefferson.’

For the proposal to pass, both California voters and the federal government would need to approve, according to BetaBeat.